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The Greatest Interview Question of All Time

I’m on vacation with my family in Boston this weekend (Go Jets!) and so I thought I’d go digging for some “old fashioned” blog posts that might still have a lot of validity in today’s market.

Kacey Claiborne, our Director of Talent Evaluation at HireBetter® suggested I look into this one from Lou Adler. Things that were happening when this was written:

-The World Trade Center in NYC had its 2 towers

-We didn’t need to take out/off our laptops, belts, hats or shoes at the airport

-George Bush was sworn in as President

The year? 2001

What I found truly remarkable about this one, single post was how applicable it was back then (when no one had really heard of Topgrading®) and how it is even MORE applicable today. Enjoy!

Over the course of the past 20 years, I’ve been searching for — among other things — the single best question to ask in an interview. What I wanted to create was a One-Question Interview, a stand-alone query that would pierce through the veneer of generalizations, overcome typical candidate nervousness, minimize the impact of the candidate’s personality on the interviewer, eliminate the exaggeration which many candidates adopt as an interviewing ploy and actually determine if the candidate is competent and motivated to do the work required.

Through years of trial and error, I finally hit upon one question that did it all. If you were allowed to ask only one question during the course of the interview, this would be it: Please think about your most significant accomplishment. Now, could you tell me all about it? Imagine you’re the candidate and I’ve just asked you this question. What accomplishment would you select? Then imagine over the course of the next 5-20 minutes that I obtained the following information from you about this accomplishment:

A complete description of the accomplishment

The company you worked for and what it did

The actual results achieved: numbers, facts, changes made, details, amounts

When it took place

How long it took

The importance of this accomplishment to the company

Your title and role

Why you were chosen

The 3-4 biggest challenges you faced and how you dealt with them

A few examples of leadership and initiative

Some of the major decisions made

The environment and resources available

How you made more resources available

The technical skills needed to accomplish the objective

The technical skills learned and how long it took to learn them

The actual role you played

The team involved and all of the reporting relationships

Some of the biggest mistakes you made

How you changed and grew as a person

What you would do differently if you could do it again

Aspects of the project you truly enjoyed

Aspects you didn’t especially care about

The budget available and your role in preparing it and managing it

How you did on the project vs. the plan

How you developed the plan

How you motivated and influenced others, with specific examples to prove your claims

How you dealt with conflict with specific examples

Anything else you felt was important to the success of the project

Just about everything you need to know about a person’s competency can be extracted from this type of question. Most people would agree this type of question is very revealing. But the real issue is not the question: it’s the information that’s given in response that’s most important. Few people are able to give this type of information without additional prompting from the interviewer. This is what real interviewing is about: getting the answer to this very simple but very powerful question. Don’t spend time learning a lot of clever questions to ask during the interview: spend time learning to get the answer to just this one question. The key: understand the accomplishment, the process used to achieve the accomplishment, the environment in which the accomplishment took place and the candidate’s role.

Tags: hire better, hiring manager, Interview, lou adler, Recruiting, Topgrading, topgrading methodology

07 Dec 10 | Interviewing, Recruiting, Topgrading | Read on | Comment (1)

How Palms, Lips & Bellybuttons Can Make You A Better Interviewer [Part 4 of 4: Navarro]

Because of the generosity of Joe Navarro, a man who spent 25 years as a counterintelligence special agent, I’ve had the opportunity to share a lot of research and guidance about nonverbal and verbal communication with you over the last few weeks. To recap:

Part 1: Not even those who are considered “experts” in interrogation can detect deception.
Part 2: Guilty Knowledge manifests itself in a couple of significant ways including neck-rubbing and dis-possession
Part 3: Indicators of Stress through nonverbal communication are the result of the Limbic Brain (or the ‘honest brain’) orchestrating behavior that relates to emotions. This is manifested most often through the feet and shoulders.

For the final installment in this Four Part Series my hope is that you’ll walk away with the most takeaway value of all. I believe that even if you haven’t read Joe’s book What Every Body is Saying you’ll be a better Interviewer and Leader after reading what he had to say.

[JDavis] Let’s break it down to basics – What are the Top 2 or 3 Nonverbal Displays that I should look for to make me a better Interviewer?

In all of the ones I’m going to share, the common theme is a sudden a change in the countenance of the person. Watch for signs that would indicate that they were comfortable and now they seem somewhat uncomfortable without any explanation. That indicates that something is bothering them (maybe your question or maybe another factor like gas from their lunch).

I look for things like compressed lips, touching the neck, distancing behavior (pushing away) to indicate that there may be something wrong. When it comes to stress, nothing is more universal than disappearing lips. When someone presses their lips together it is as if the limbic brain is telling them to ‘shut down and don’t allow anything into the body’.
This one is subtler: The person may “blade” their body away (called ventral denial). If they’ve been facing you and then they turn to not have their front or “belly side” pointed at you. Our ventral (front) side, where our eyes, mouth, chest, breasts, genitals, etc are located, is very sensitive to things that we like and dislike. It’s also the most vulnerable side of the body so the limbic brain has an inherent need to protect it from the things that hurt or bother us.
They start to use objects (a woman could grab a purse and put it on her lap and use it as a barrier). A man might pick up a laptop and put it on their legs to be a barrier to protect themselves. When you witness people protecting their torsos in real time you can use it as an accurate indicator of discomfort on their part.

[JDavis] We’ve spent a lot of time talking about indicators of stress or guilt. Is there anything that a Candidate might do to show that they’re confident in answer?

The simplest guide I’ve seen that stretches across all cultures globally is the HANDS. Watch for whether they affirm statements PALM DOWN or PALM UP. Palm down with the fingers spread is positive and affirmative. PALM UP with fingers together they lack confidence (over 99% of the world’s population behaves this way).

[JDavis] What if someone unexpectedly moves their hands off the table and places them on their lap or where I can’t see them?

If someone withdraws their hands from the table it’s not enough of an indicator. That’s about as common as blinking their eyes. To simply attach one simple behavior like that just isn’t enough without looking at other body queues.

[JDavis] You’ve emphasize repeatedly in your books, your speeches and even this conversation that trying to read nonverbal behaviors can be more dangerous than it is beneficial to someone without formal training. Why is that?

When people first start looking into nonverbal communication it’s very similar to a young child learning how to read. It’s linear: left to right (i.e. Nose, Lips, Shoulders, Hands). The risk here is that many times the isolated behaviors aren’t significant enough without understanding what the whole body is doing.

At the start of my career I spent so much time looking at the face because we learned that even newborns are expressing themselves nonverbally through their facial expressions at only 3 days old. Today, I can see the whole body at once. That’s my parting shot to anyone who is going to use what they’ve learned from these posts: Relax, try to look at the whole body and don’t beat yourself up trying to look for every little queue.

For twenty-five years, Joe Navarro was an FBI counterintelligence special agent and supervisor specializing in nonverbal communications. A frequent lecturer, he serves on the adjunct faculty at Saint Leo University and the FBI. You can learn more about Joe through his website or by following him on Twitter.

Tags: Body Language, hire better, hiring manager, Interview, interview training, Joe Navarro, talent acquisition

23 Nov 10 | Interviewing | Read on | Comments (2)

The Most Honest Part of Your Body [Part 3 of 4: Navarro]

Joe Navarro’s career as a counterintelligence special agent for the FBI made him one of the most uniquely qualified experts on nonverbal communication. When you spend 25 years interrogating terrorists and criminals you’re bound to pick up on a few things.

In Chapter 1 of this 4 Part blog series he shared that even the “experts” in law enforcement can’t accurately tell if someone is deceiving you or lying to you. The 2nd Chapter focused on the significance of dis-possession: how it’s NEVER a good thing when someone suddenly stops claiming ownership for something (my gun vs. the gun).

As my interview with Joe progressed we started talking about specific nonverbal behaviors and actions that someone might exhibit that would give you a huge clue that they’re uncomfortable and you should dig in further. It’s important to point out that this also ties in nicely with what Chris Mursau shared a few weeks ago about the significance of self-awareness and why a Candidate who answers a question about their weaknesses or career mistakes with, “You know…I can’t think of any.”

[JDavis] Earlier in our conversation you suggested that it’s fairly easy to pick up on INDICATORS OF STRESS. We discussed the weight that certain words can have (a knife or blade vs. a machete) and that if someone knows how to look for these key indicators they should dig in further. What’s an example of an INDICATOR OF STRESS?

In my experience, the most honest part of anyone’s body is their feet. If you watch someone who’s on the phone, even if you can’t hear what the dialogue is, their feet will tell the story. When a conversation is going well, their feet will defy gravity. Just like tapping your feet to the beat of a song you like, our feet and legs move up and down based on whether something is positive or not. Interestingly, gravity-defying behaviors rarely show up in people who are suffering from clinical depression. It’s because the body reflects precisely the emotional state of an individual – even if their mouth is saying something different.

[JDavis] Is there anything really specific that might happen to the feet and legs during an interview or a conversation that an amateur could look for to help them detect stress?

Yes. I call it “Distancing”. Most of the research that has been done on nonverbal displays of discomfort or guilt seemed to concentrate on the face. One thing I found was that people with guilty knowledge or discomfort (stress) distance themselves with their feet. If you bring up a subject they don’t like they’ll place their feet in the “starter’s position” because they literally want to run away and not be there.

[JDavis] I can see it being a bit awkward as an interviewer to constantly be looking under the table at someone’s feet when we’re supposed to be talking with them and acting like we’re paying attention. What are some examples of nonverbal behavior above the table that an interviewer might notice?

To answer this question it’s important to explain how the brain works first. In nonverbal communication, the limbic brain is where the action is because it’s the brain’s emotional center. From here, the signals that go out that orchestrate our behaviors as they relate to our emotions. It’s considered the “honest brain” because many of the behavioral reactions that are manifested through our feet, torso, arms, hands and faces occur without thought and, unlike our words, they are genuine.

With that said, we use our shoulders all the time. If you get asked, “do you care where we eat?”, a quick shrug would be representative of a low confidence display that shows that you don’t truly care.

In a more serious setting, if you ask someone, “Will this project be done by July?” and they answer by having ONE shoulder rise up to their ear, you can deduce that the person who is answering lacks confidence. Having one shoulder come up is a subconscious way of that person demonstrating that they have some internal doubt or internal dialogue that doesn’t support the verbal answer that they are giving you. The opposite is also true: when we answer something with confidence, our shoulders are down and squared.

In the final installment of this 4 Part Series I’ll share Joe’s Top nonverbal actions that represent a change in countenance of someone you’re interviewing.

Tags: Body Language, chris mursau, Interview, Joe Navarro

09 Nov 10 | Interviewing | Read on | Comment (1)

The Big/Small Gap: Hiring Challenges of Entrepreneurs

As an Entrepreneur it took me a number of years of observing and operating within the “People Sector” before I began to recognize the unique skills necessary for people to be successful and content within different-sized companies. While it’s likely won’t come as a surprise, I found that people from BIG companies rarely succeed in SMALL ones and vice versa.

To better understand the why this might be the case and how it directly impacts Entrepreneurs and small companies I sought out Conor Neill – a business thought leader with a decade of Accenture Experience along with a resume that includes four start-ups of his own.

[JDavis] Before talking about the unique challenges of hiring in a Small Business, what did you experience during your time at Accenture?

Everything was already set up for us to succeed. We had an HR Team that had access to a vast bench of talent that could help staff up a 6-person project quickly. We had so many candidates to consider for our new hire needs that I was able to build what I called the “Critical Behavior Interview”. Put simply, I had a list of 21 behaviors and they had to mention each of these types of behaviors without my prompting in an open format for me to recommend them for hire.

Because of this infrastructure I got a little spoiled. I realized that even if I made a snap judgment within 5 minutes of meeting someone and it turned out to be wrong, they were being hired into a huge pool of people and there were lots of opportunities for them to hide.

[JDavis] How did it change once you began starting your own companies?

I’ve learned through my own experience and through talking with other Entrepreneurs that the initial 10-20 hires in a company are actually quite easy. It’s because you’re hiring friends or networks of friends and as the Owner/Founder you can still tell everyone what to do. That means that even a failed hire isn’t all that damaging because each of the people are just there to execute on your vision.

[JDavis] Where does it start to get hard?

At $1mm in revenue a company has a product or service and it usually works. If the company is capable of scaling it will result in a lot of jobs but in the run from $1mm to $10mm a lot of change happens – more than at any other time in the lifecycle of a company.

One of the biggest changes is bringing in Senior Management. When an Entrepreneur starts to hire for these roles and they’re hiring from a resume and talking with someone who knows all about Six Sigma or Plant Logistics it can be really hard for them. There’s a lot of intimidation that occurs due to the resume and experience of the Executives and it’s difficult for an Entrepreneur to really determine, “is this the right person for the job?”.

[JDavis] What was the hardest part of this for you?

Without a doubt it was hiring people older than me. They had impressive CV’s. Significantly more experience than I did. I found it hard to see beyond their experience. I also found it hard to ask someone who was my Dad’s age about how they performed, how they handled failures or what their weaknesses were.

[JDavis] What’s your #1 Takeaway for Entrepreneurs?

A Hiring Process is largely common sense. The problem most people (myself included) ran into was that many of the processes that I created were ones I expected my staff to comply with yet I went around them. Hiring was no exception.

Having a Hiring Process in place will help tremendously. I liken it to brushing your teeth. Brushing your teeth works because you do it every day and the same way each time. You do it every day and the same way because you’ve seen other people do it and you know it’s working. If you wait to start brushing your teeth until they’re rotting, it’s too late.

Conor Neill is a professor at IESE Business School. An entrepreneur who has founded four companies, he is past Area Director of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) and spent a number of years in the Change Management division of Accenture. He has earned both a psychology degree and an MBA and in his spare time blogs about entrepreneurship, success and learning from the little failures in life at www.conorneill.com.

Tags: behavior-based interview, conor neill, entrepreneur, hiring process

02 Nov 10 | Employment, Interviewing, Recruiting | Read on | Comments (3)

What Can You Learn From A Terrorist? [Part 2 of 4: Navarro]

After hearing Joe Navarro speak and then reading his book What Every Body is Saying, I decided to seek him out to ask him some pointed questions about what he has learned about non-verbal communication through his 25 years as a counterintelligence special agent with the FBI. This is the second in a four part series that started with Detecting Deception (click here for Part 3 and here for Part 4). For today, I’m going to focus on something that Joe calls: GUILTY KNOWLEDGE.

[JDavis] We now understand that it’s nearly impossible to tell if someone is lying. What then, is the next best alternative?

I learned to look for INDICATORS OF STRESS. If a question causes someone stress or bothers them, dig in to find out why. As you learn to identify these indicators, you’ll realize that not everything has the same weight during questioning.

Here’s an example (using a crime suspect): If I’m questioning them about a case where someone was murdered a machete, I could ask them lots of different questions about a knife, a blade or a sharp object. What I’ve found is that they probably won’t react with the same level of guilty discomfort as if I were to ask them specifically about a machete.

[JDavis] What is the most likely indicator of discomfort that someone would show non-verbally?

For decades I kept seeing a very interesting thing happening during interrogation but this one action never showed up in research. I finally realized that researchers don’t sit in front of terrorists. They sit in front of students who are being asked to deal with made up situations.

What I observed over time was that when people were really under stress or there was insecurity, people would touch their neck. Men do it more robustly and women delicately. By studying it I realized that we rarely touch our necks UNLESS we’re uncomfortable. We so infrequently touch our neck unless there is a specific issue that we feel guilty about.

[JDavis] Could this “guilty discomfort” manifest itself through verbal cues as well?

Absolutely! I call this DIS-POSESSION. Remember, for people with “guilty knowledge”, words have weight. Here’s how it works:

Interviewer (to a suspect): Do you own a Smith & Wesson Handgun?

Suspect: Yes I do.

Interviewer: Where do you keep it?

Suspect: I keep my gun in a locked safe in my bedroom closet.

Interviewer: Were you aware that I’m investigating a murder in your neighborhood in which the murder weapon was a Smith & Wesson Handgun?

Suspect: No, I wasn’t aware of that.

Interviewer: Can you tell me where your gun is right now?

Suspect: I’m not sure where the gun is.

The subtle difference here is that as soon as the gun that the Suspect owns is tied to this murder, and because the Suspect has “guilty knowledge”, you’ll notice that he dis-possessed the weapon – changing it from “my gun” to “the gun”. If that “guilty knowledge” wasn’t present, you would have heard the Suspect continue to take ownership by most likely using the statement, “I’m not sure where my gun is.”

This happens all the time between parents - If a father shows up after work and his wife needs to share that their daughter has spilled juice on his favorite chair, she’ll say, “Guess what YOUR Daughter did?”. By not saying “Our daughter”, she’s dis-possessing herself due to guilty knowledge. The minute you hear distancing, you know something is wrong. It’s NEVER positive. For further clarification, if a mother had something she was proud of she’d likely say, “guess what OUR son did? He won first place!”

One last example of this in real life: Bill Clinton referred to Monica Lewinsky as… “That Woman”

In Part 3 I’ll share Joe’s tips on what he calls “The Most Honest Part Of Our Body.”

Tags: Body Language, dis-posession, guilty knowledge, hiring manager, Interview, interview training, Joe Navarro, topgrading interview

26 Oct 10 | Interviewing | Read on | Comments (3)

Detecting Deception [Part 1 of 4: Navarro]

One of the most powerful and insightful speakers that I’ve had the opportunity to hear in the past decade is Joe Navarro. He’s the author of What Every Body Is Saying (and a lot of other books too) and a 25 year veteran of the FBI as a counterintelligence special agent.

I contacted Joe and asked him if he’d share some of his expertise with you as readers of the HireBetter Blog so that you can be more effective interviewers. He was very generous with his time and the tips he shared are SO GOOD that I’ve decided to make a short 4-part series out of the information (click here for Part 2 and Part 3 and Part 4).

We started our conversation at a high level and that’s what this post will focus on. In the forthcoming blog entries I’ll dig in further around certain actions that a Candidate might take that will give you clues that you can use in your evaluation process. Enjoy!

[JDavis]: There are a lot of studies out there that suggest that Body Language is the most significant aspect of our communication. However, they all seem to say something different. What percentage of what someone is saying is their Body Language versus their Tonality and the actual Words?

The simple answer: no one really knows. Body Language is clearly the most powerful and significant of the 3 you’ve mentioned but here are some examples of how it can differ:

If you’re on a date and you’re sitting there ‘googley-eyed’ at your new lover, body language can be 98% or even more of what you’re saying
Political Events, whether debates or press events or even just stump speeches are often scripted and very orchestrated. Even with this, very few people ever remember what someone said during the debate or speech. Yet, if I simply asked you if you remembered “The Wink” most people will immediately remember Sarah Palin.
If someone you’re talking with is describing something technical or mathematical, body language accounts for very little of what they’re saying.

[JDavis]: Then what proof do you have that Body Language means anything at all?

When we look at studies of blind children talking with other blind children, they still use ALL of the same body language as people who have the gift of sight. A prime example: they even cover their eyes when they hear something they don’t like yet they’ve never SEEN other people using these behaviors before!

[JDavis]: After all of your years in counterintelligence, can you tell if someone is lying to you?

With all of the TV Shows and Police Movies that are out there today, you’d think it was possible, right? In my experience NO, I can’t tell if someone is lying or not. In fact, in 1986 Paul Ekman went out and tried to figure out if people really could “Detect Liars”. He found that the very best people were only as good as a coin flip.

To follow that up, in 2004 Maureen O’Sullivan completed an exhaustive study by looking at 14,000 Police Officers, Detectives, Judges, Psychologists (all people who you’d think, because of their training, that they would be better than average at this skill).

The results? Only 33 people (0.2%) were good enough at detecting someone who was lying to receive a grade of “above random chance” (meaning they could do it at least 66% of the time).

Police Officers and others in Law Enforcement often think that they’re expert at detecting deception. What we learned was that the people they were observing or questioning were nervous from being interrogated and the stress that they were experiencing resulted in “tells” that the police officers were interpreting as deception.

In upcoming posts I’ll share Joe’s tips on how you can keep your eyes open for “tells”, what the actions of the feet, hands, face and shoulders mean and what you should do if the countenance of a Candidate suddenly changes. I look forward to sharing these with you and hearing your thoughts.

Tags: Body Language, hiring manager, Interview, interview training, Joe Navarro, topgrading interview

19 Oct 10 | Interviewing | Read on | Comments (8)

Ask the Experts: Stop Shooting From The Hip

In an ongoing effort to Add Value for you as a Leader, I’ve been seeking out Experts who have unique talents to ask them for their experiences. This week Doug Wick, a Professional Coach and Business Advisor, shares some of his thoughts on how you can improve your hiring.

[JDavis] What do you see as the biggest challenge your clients face when they make hiring decisions?

In most cases they’re shooting from the hip. Most of them have, at best, a 50/50 chance of someone they hire being the right fit. Not only that, they often don’t have any clue to figure out or determine if someone is a solid candidate when they make their final decision. They’re simply not confident in their “system” for hiring and, even those companies who who have taken the time to build a “system” aren’t sure whether or not it’s telling them the right things about people that they’re interviewing.

[JDavis] What are the top 2 or 3 recommendations you’ve made in the past year to your clients on how to improve hiring effectiveness?

1. Embrace and utilize Topgrading. The methodology is terrific.

2. I’ve built a process to measure and review my clients’ hiring “batting average.” Through this I’ve learned to encourage people to look back and reflect on their recent hires and rank “good” and “bad”. I had a client who used the Topgrading Methodology but they still missed on a key hire and this reflective activity that I took them through following that mis-hire helped them get a better grasp on what their culture is and how to screen more for cultural fit during the interview process. If you don’t evaluate why you’ve been making mistakes you are bound to repeat the same mistake in the future. The hiring process is often very subjective. Recognizing your mistakes moves you from making a largely emotional decision to a decision steeped in objectivity with a seasoning of emotion which provides the best hiring outcome.

3. When hiring salespeople, I encourage our clients to use the Objective Management Group’s sales screening test. The outcomes [according to OMG research] produce a 96% effective sales hire. From what I’ve seen, the results do actually match up with those claims. They’re very thorough and accurate. Despite their effectiveness we still recommend doing the Topgrading interview with the candidates the test recommends to make sure their test results and track record match.

[JDavis] How instrumental do you feel regular Strategic Planning is to making the right hiring decisions?

It’s important. While it’s not as important as employing Topgrading, if a company is doing Strategic Planning they’re likely to be more aware of where they are going (and from what I’ve seen, most companies plan to improve and grow). With that sense of awareness, they are more cognizant of the need to upgrade their existing staff or add additional staff to achieve their vision. Strategic planning helps companies better understand how important it is to get the right people on the bus because they spend the time understanding their business and its trajectory.

[JDavis] Who are the companies that you’ve witnessed that have done a great job of hiring the right talent and why?

Ideal Computer Systems (Cedar Rapids, IA) – they have a really solid interviewing process that is based on a step-based interview process that makes people who are candidates go through stages that include really tough interview questions that require someone to prove that they’re an “achiever”. They also consistently do great reference checks and also ensure that they’re always doing background checks on everyone.

Meta Law (Ventura, CA) they had a very long and disappointing process of spending more than 18 months searching for a “successor” to the President of the company. They interviewed local talent and they got discouraged when they didn’t find the right person for the role. On my suggestion they went out and ran ads in places like their association newsletter that resulted in them getting introduced to a great candidate who was moving back to the city/location they are based in. Then utilizing Topgrading and not “settling” for someone just because they were tired of looking or because they didn’t want to expand their geographic reach, they made a great hiring decision. I always find it so rewarding as an outside consultant when a company can really use Topgrading and it results in an exceptional hire.

Doug Wick

Doug Wick is a certified Gazelles Coach with 12 years of coaching experience and 9+ years as an E-Myth Certified Consultant. Doug coaches his clients on how to develop Strategic Discipline. He focuses on small to midsize business owner/CEO with a ravenous appetite to improve their leadership skills and business results. Positioning Systems provides unrelenting personal commitment combined with foundational and dynamic best practice tools that enhance management proficiency and produce measurable performance.

Tags: A-Player, hiring, Interview, Objective Management Group, talent acquisition, Topgrading, topgrading methodology, verne harnish

07 Oct 10 | Interviewing, Recruiting, Topgrading | Read on | Comments (0)

Be Like Mike: Tips for Visualizing Success

While it’s not necessarily scientific, the HireBetter Team has determined that there are two reasons why a new hire doesn’t work out: (1) You weren’t clear on what you needed someone to do OR (2) You failed to tell the new hire what they needed to do.

To explore this further I sought out Patrick Thean, a professional Coach and the author of Execute Without Drama – a book that we have greatly benefited from as an organization.

In Patrick’s experience, for a manager to get better at visualization within hiring as well as company leadership, they will find the most success in doing the following four things:

Listen to what others have to say. Too often we are pushing people to listen to how we want them to do it. Instead, ask others “What does success look like? How would you view this journey? How will the person feel or look if they’re doing well?”
Explain the exact outcomes you want to see. Then assess the work environment that you’ve got and be honest with how much time you can spend as a manager coaching and advising them.
Walk through a single successful day with your new employee. What are the things that they might do that would drive you nuts that would cause you to want to jump out your window by lunch?
What does success look like? What are the few things that you see as the few activities that new person will be engaged in that would make them successful? What makes YOU successful during your day that they’ll need to do?

For those of you who are old enough to have watched Michael Jordan in the 80′s & 90′s, you’ll likely remember the stories of him visualizing every shot before he would take them. This exercise isn’t nearly as hard as you think it is!

According to Patrick it’s unlikely you will be “spot on” during visualization. You’re probably going to make mistakes. But if you can explain what a successful day looks like for a prospective employee and they don’t like what they are hearing, they’re probably going to self-select out!

Patrick Thean is an award-winning serial entrepreneur who has started and exited multiple startups. He received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for North Carolina in 1996 and achieved a ranking of 151 on the Inc 500 in 1997.

An international speaker and the author of Execute Without Drama, Patrick has spoken to thousands of business owners on the topics of sustaining business growth, venture capital, and strategic exit strategies. He provides practical insights on building a culture of execution.

Tags: hire better, hiring, Interview, patrick thean, Topgrading, visualization

21 Sep 10 | Employment, Interviewing, Recruiting | Read on | Comments (3)

The Top 4 Predictors of Success When Hiring

I read a few blogs on a very regular basis and this week I want to share with you a really great post from one of them. Conor Neill, on his blog The Rhetorical Journey, recently featured a video by Randy Nelson, the Dean of Pixar University, where shared how the PROOF of a portfolio is significantly more valuable than the PROMISE of a resume.

The things that you’ll read below are truly some of the most powerful tips that I’ve ever read or heard and if you’re in any kind of leadership capacity within a business, you absolutely need to read this at least once (and I’d encourage you to read it more than once) and then take the time to watch Randy’s video. This is incredibly insightful – I hope you agree!

Depth (in any area) – Randy believes that the best predictor of ability to master any one area is if somebody has already mastered another area. It is more likely that someone who has achieved mastery in golf will achieve mastery as a Pixar artist or programmer than any set of pre-existing talent as an artist or programmer. Mastery requires discipline more than talent. Discipline requires humility. In the highly important NASA search for the astronauts to travel to the moon they were looking for mastery after some form of setback. They placed a huge value on people who had failed and recovered. In doing new things (buzz word “Innovation”) the key skill is “failure recovery”.
Breadth - He says they look for interested people more than interesting people. People who are broadly curious rather than just “different”. The key question is does this person “amplify me”? Can this person take my ideas and return them with passion?
Communication - Communication requires a process of translation. When a techie speaks to an artist she must speak in language that the artist understands. Randy says that nobody can be considered articulate, because the only success of communication is that the listener can say “I understand you”.
Collaboration - This is far beyond simple cooperation. Cooperation is for assembly lines [e.g. Ford Model T production workers]. Knowledge work requries the ability for team members to amplify each other – creating truly connected human beings.

The video for this is about 10 minutes long and it’s worth the time. You can view it below.

Tags: conor neill, hire better, hiring, Interview, predictability, recruit don't absorb, talent acquisition, Topgrading

14 Sep 10 | Employment, Interviewing, Recruiting, Topgrading | Read on | Comments (2)

ECO101 – Is Your Company In Demand?

In the Davis Household, the start of the NFL Season is always a momentous time for our family. As we’ve been watching HBO’s Hard Knocks (I’m a huge Jets Fan) and reading about the players’ reactions to having the coaches’ critiques of them being aired for everyone to see as well as how hard the coaches push the players to perform, it got me thinking about how this kind of situation applies to businesses that don’t employ professional athletes.

Specifically, a few months ago, in advance of the NFL Draft, there was a situation where a Wide Receiver from Oklahoma State was being interviewed by the Miami Dolphins and a General Manager stepped over the line. While interviews with management are very common before these Teams make their decision to spend millions of dollars, the reason this particular interview received so much press was because the GM asked Mr. Bryant, “Is your mother a prostitute?”

I’m not interested in debating whether or not this was a fair question.

Rather, I’d like to offer the following thoughts for you to ponder as a Business Leader:

One of the common complaints I hear from Business Leaders is that the process of Topgrading is too arduous to implement or, even more common, they question why an A-Player would allow someone to put them through filling out a Career History Form or go through a 4 Hour Interview. They challenge me by saying, “Other companies that want that person won’t ask them to go through all of these steps – won’t we lose the best talent if we ask them to do so much more than our competition?”

My belief is that this a simpler situation than many would make it out to be: it’s Economics 101 where you learn about Supply and Demand. However, it’s not supply and demand from the perspective that these aforementioned Leaders would think [that A-Players are in short supply and thus have high demand]. Rather, it’s whether or not your COMPANY is in demand and the SUPPLY of positions available are limited.

Everyone is aware of those companies that have such a great culture and reputation that they have thousands of people who want to get considered for each role – Companies like Google, Oracle and DELL back in the 90′s, Bazaarvoice here in Austin a couple of years ago.

With the NFL, so many young Athletes want to have a shot at “working” for a professional team that they are more than willing to subject themselves to the Combines where they are poked and prodded and then stripped down to their underwear and asked to sprint and lift weights. They take mental acuity tests (remember Vince Young 3 years ago?). Even in the college ranks, there are young men across the country who pay hundreds of dollars to attend “camps” at major universities where the instruction that they receive is secondary to their dream of getting “noticed”.

The ultimate question I would pose to you is: What are you doing to make your Culture and your Organization one where people people WANT to get in and they’re more than happy to go through an extensive Assessment Process (like Topgrading) with a smile on their face because they know that there’s a brilliant career opportunity waiting for them on the other end if they make it through?

Tags: A-Players, career history, hire better, hiring, Interview, recruit don't absorb, talent acquisition, Topgrading, topgrading methodology

07 Sep 10 | Employment, Interviewing, Recruiting, Topgrading | Read on | Comment (1)

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